Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci may have visited Japan four times, but that is nothing compared to the many, many trips he has made there in his imagination. Firstly as a kid growing up in Italy, he loved to play with Japanese toy robots that looked like the kind of armored automaton you’d regularly see laying waste to whole cities in fifties B movies. Then secondly, rather more recently, when he became enamored with the Japanese choreographer/dancer Kazuo Ohno, whom he met one night through their mutual friend, singer Antony Hegarty. So, Japan is where he is going for Givenchy haute couture this spring, but the challenge was how to make the collection look like it didn’t bear the stamp of the country the same way it did in his passport, an indelible mark that can only indicate an irrefutable and obvious trip. Expect, then, instead of clichéd geisha kimonos, a ceremonial, almost martial, feel to his ten almost-all-eveningwear looks, created with a few Tisci-isms his couture clients always love and some remarkable handwork. This detail is of a dress that alone took 4,000 hours to make—while the hand-dyed and hand-cut sequins added on another 2,000. If you’ve loved the source of your inspiration for a long time, you want to do it justice, after all.